esbuild

esbuild changed the industry by proving that build tools could be 100x faster if written in Go/Rust. It is not just a bundler but a transpiler.

When to Use

• Pre-bundling: Used by Vite to bundle dependencies.
• Lambda Bundling: Creating small, single-file bundles for AWS Lambda.
• Speed: When Webpack takes 5 mins, esbuild takes 200ms.

Core Concepts

Go

Written in Go, compiled to native code. No JS overhead.

API

Simple, minimal API. esbuild.build({ ... }).

Plugins

Allows intercepting imports, but limited compared to Rollup/Webpack (by design).

Best Practices (2025)

Do:

• Use for TS Transpilation: It strips types instantly.
• Target esnext: Let it output modern code for modern browsers.

Don't:

• Don't expect Type Checking: esbuild strips types; it does not check them. Run tsc --noEmit separately.

References

• esbuild Documentation